If you have ever went to a football game, whether it be college or the NFL, you just do not go for the game. You go for the whole entertainment package. You go for the tailgating experience hours before. You go to be with friends and/or family. You go for the entertainment that the stadium brings, whether it be the halftime show, the cheerleaders, the horns and whistles of the home team getting the fans ramped up in every way, shape and form. This is the game day experience. When I go to the NYC Hot Expo, I go for the whole enchilada. This Saturday and Sunday, April 22-23, 2017, I come for the party.

Calling all manufacturers of spicy goods! Do you want your product to be seen by 200,000 chileheads? Does a full page in Chile Pepper to showcase your products sound good? What about being included in Chile Pepper’s renewal notices? An award to prove to your peers and customers just how tasty your product is?If your answer is a resounding YES!, then you need to enter The Chile Pepper Awards competition. And the good news is that there’s still time to meet the deadline of October 21.

You can just find out by going to their website, (http://www.theflaveawards.com/) to see what it is all about since I am pretty much copying and pasting their information right here. Well, mostly. The International Flavor Awards, LLC (IFA’s) in conjunction with the creators of the Summer Feast Food & Music Festival are excited to invite you to compete in the “2016 Flave Awards”. More about the Summer Feast below. The Flave Awards are brand spanking new to this industry, so new there is no pictures yet of what they look like with less than a month to go. They mention a glass trophy for all winners and ribbons for 2nd and 3rd place so at least that is something. There are over 50 categories with an introductory cost of only $50/entry, but with 1 free entry if you enter 3 categories at $150 and 2 free entries if you enter 5 categories at $250. That isn’t too bad to compete for something to put on display for customers to know you done right. Now here is the part I think you will like the most, so pay close attention to what you read next:

The NYC Hot Sauce Expo is proud to announce the 2016 Screaming Mi Mi Award winners. With hundreds of entries the winners were selected by blind taste test by New Yorks finest and brightest in the culinary industry. The panel consisted of chefs from FOX, CBS and Food Networks, Food Critics from NYC Newspapers, Bloggers, Magazines, Hot Sauce Retailers, and some of NYC’s Top Chefs. The Screaming Mi Mi Awards have been creating a large industry buzz within the Hot Sauce Community. Past winners have received features on TV, magazines, newspapers creating a profile that has lead for their product distributed by wholesalers and national retail outlets.

These are the winners’ list from the 2016 Zestfest Fiery Food Challenge last night. I see a lot of friends that I know in the hot sauce world. I would like to congratulate them on seeing their hard work pay off. I am very happy for you all. Super congratulations to Troy Primo of Primo’s Peppers for having the Best Overall Product as seen in the picture above. It looks like he also won a Disc-It! Grill as Fiber Joe has covered in his article in November. Nice Job Troy!Company – Product – Place

The NYC Hot Sauce Expo is proud to announce the 2015 Screaming Mi Mi Award winners. With hundreds of entries the winners were selected by blind taste test by New Yorks finest and brightest in the culinary industry. The panel consisted of chefs from FOX, CBS and Food Networks, Food Critics from NYC Newspapers, Bloggers, Magazines, Hot Sauce Retailers, Wholesalers and some of NYC’s Top Chefs. The Screaming Mi Mi Awards have been creating a large industry buzz within the Hot Sauce Community. Past winners have received features on TV, magazines, newspapers creating a profile that has lead for their product distributed by wholesalers and national retail outlets.

The Screaming Mi Mi Awards were presented in front of the media and live audience on Saturday April 24th at the 3rd Annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo. This was a year to remember with some amazing highlights. CaJohn’s took the Three-Peat in the Louisiana Style Hot Sauce with their Firehouse Hot Sauce, Defcon Sauces took the first ever sweep in Screaming Mi Mi history collecting 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in the Chicken Wing category and Brooklyn newcomer Queen Majesty took 2 Screaming Mi Mi’s in the Jalapeno and All Natural categories. It was a tightly scored competition and the winners are very much deserved.

Just in case you did not notice the Ticklemaster part of the above ticket, it is fake. There is no ticket for $499.99, so please do not panic! The time to panic is when you enter one of the many scheduled events at the NYC Hot Sauce Expo. Such as the Puckerbutt Guinness Book of World Records Smokin’ Ed’s Carolina Reaper pepper eating record for 1 minute. A slight change from last year’s 3 pepper eating and done display. That will end the show on Sunday.

Then there is our 3rd Annual Fiery Pizza Eating Contest co-sponsored with our friends at Volcanic Peppers and the infamous Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. Each contestant will get a Volcanically Enhanced Grimaldi’s pizza that they have to eat in a pre-determined amount of time. The first one finished or eats the most will be declared the winner and get this beautiful trophy…

The list for the winners was a copy and paste from what was posted on Facebook. Chile Pepper Magazine was nice enough to send me the results, but in a format I could not use, so I did what I could do to present you with the list of winners. Please forgive me for any spelling mistakes. If you need to have me correct anything, email me at albuddah@yahoo.com with your corrections, and I will get to it as soon as I can. Congrats to all the companies that won or placed in these prestigious awards. Keep up the good and spicy work folks!

Straight from the Louisiana Hot Sauce Expo comes the 1st annual World Hot Sauce Awards with one of the coolest trophies ever created for this industry. Check her out..

Pretty isn’t she? A big thank you goes out to Dana Romero for allowing me to post these results as soon as the awards dinner was over. Another huge thank you goes out to our own Ken Alexander of www.FieryWorld.com for formatting the results for us. Kudos to you both. I want to also congratulate all the winners and thank all the entries for supporting these great awards. It is very hard to not only put on a 1st year event, but also bring in a whole new award to the community. Dana has worked hard on this event, and we here at ILIS hope it is a very successful show for the ages. Much success to all the vendors and sponsors who are putting in their trust in Dana. Now let us get to the winners…